Module 1. Mindfulness: (Discussion #4) Describing

DBTuesday is a series of posts where we explore skills and concepts from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).

This is one of several posts focusing on mindfulness, which is the first module of DBT skills training. See this post for general info about DBT and this post for more info about mindfulness.

What is “describing”?

In the past couple posts, we have discussed the mindfulness skill of observing, which is non-judgmentally noticing the experiences that are happening right now.

The next mindfulness skill of describing is putting what you observe into words.

Describing is based on observing

When discussing observing, we mentioned that sometimes there will be an original experience and then there will be a stream of thoughts reacting to that experience.

Experience -> Thought #1 -> Thought #2 -> Thought #3 -> etc.

One of the aims of observing is to stay with the original experience instead of following that stream of thoughts.

With describing, we are putting words to what we observe. That means we are still staying with the original experience, just like we do with observing.

Examples of what describing is and isn’t

Let’s say that my current experience is that I notice I’m feeling tired.

Here are a few examples of what describing might look like:

• "I feel sleepy"
• "My eyes ache"
• "My arms feel tired"

Here are a few examples of things that wouldn’t be considered describing:

• Opinions like "I hate being tired!"
• Judgments like "I shouldn’t be feeling tired"
• Concepts/explanations like "I’m tired because I got only 4 hours of sleep last night"

Suppressing distracting thoughts doesn’t work

This is a slight deviation from the topic above, but I wanted to discuss a question that personally arose for me while I was researching for this post:

"I understand what you are saying about how 'describing' is ideally supposed to work. But what if I find that my mind is just naturally full of all kinds of opinions, judgments, and concepts? What am I supposed to do if that happens?"

There is a well-known body of psychological research on ironic process theory that suggests that trying to suppress thoughts actually makes it more likely that those thoughts will occur.

How to handle distracting thoughts

In a prior DBTuesday post on mindfulness, it was mentioned that there are a couple general approaches to mindfulness.

• "Focusing the mind" involves picking a particular object and trying to keep one’s attention on that
• "Opening the mind" involves just noticing whatever happens to be there and allowing one’s object of attention to spontaneously shift

These two approaches have slightly different strategies for responding to distracting thoughts.

If you are following a "focusing" approach to mindfulness, you can simply redirect your attention back to your original, chosen object. The research mentioned above on ironic process theory has found that focusing on an "absorbing distractor" is a viable approach for reducing the frequency of unwanted thoughts.

If you are following an "opening" approach to mindfulness, then the attitude would be that there isn’t really any such thing as a distraction. If a distraction happens, it is just a new experience to notice and observe. Anything/everything that happens can be used as an object for awareness.

Questions for reflection

1) Spend a few minutes observing your experience and describe one or two things you have noticed.

2) Which approach to mindfulness (focusing or opening) feels most appealing to you?

Sources:

https://bayareadbtcc.com/describe-mindfulness-skill-dbt-part-2/
https://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/describing.html
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/10/unwanted-thoughts
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28274-4